An Afghan woman waits to have her picture taken to register to vote. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)

(Newser)
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Women's rights have come a long way in Afghanistan over the last decade, but a Human Rights Watch researcher sees disturbing signs that the bad old days are poised to return as the US military exits. Violence against women has spiked in the last year, conservative lawmakers want to bring back stoning as punishment for adultery and abolish a minimum marrying age, and hundreds of women and girls are imprisoned for the "crime" of fleeing forced marriages or domestic violence, writes Heather Barr in the New York Times.

And then there's the "barbaric practice of virginity tests," in which females arrested on "morality" charges (or sometimes merely theft charges) must undergo a vaginal exam by government doctors who conclude whether she is a virgin. The tests aren't just "horrific," they're wildly inaccurate. The US and other countries pledge to keep funding women's services after international troops leave, but they have to back that up with action. "Support for the Afghan government and its security must depend on continued progress for Afghan women," writes Barr. "Anything less would be a betrayal." Click for her full column.

Exactly. After 12 year of fighting there and in Iraq, what do we have show for it? 8,000 U.S. dead (including nearly 1000 private contractors) , 40,000 U.S. wounded, paraplegics, amputees, and brain damaged. $2 Trillion in U.S. tax money poured down the toilet. And absolutely zero results. Some countries never learn. After the disaster of Vietnam, we turned around and made the exact same idiotic blunder again. And now conservatives are calling for a new war with Iran, with Syria - with China! They can never pile the American dead bodies high enough for these folks. They never piss away enough hundred of billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars. Some countries are so stupid, they deserve to decline and fall. Maybe when we are so broke that we can't afford to invade any more countries, we will finally stop. But I doubt it. We will just borrow money to do it. We already are.

freddiefedora

Dec 11, 2013 11:32 PM CST

Islamic fundamentalist Taliban men go absolutely crazy if women are granted any rights. That's what this is about.